JPMorgan

We know there are going to be attacks everywhere,” Dimon told investors at an annual meeting yesterday at the firm’s New York headquarters. Asked about challengers, the chief executive officer cited companies from Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. to Google Inc.

2013 was a year of anticipation and perhaps disappointment. For those hoping the 2012 election would have settled some of the dysfunction in Washington, that did not happen. In fact, we doubled down on fights already settled as if there were no new business. Equity markets impressed, but few saw it as anything other than the hand of the Fed. Mercifully, the Fed signaled the beginning of the end of QE3 by year-end.

The short story is that U.S. companies can, with a certain amount of effort, move their legal address to Ireland or wherever and more or less avoid paying any taxes. This is called an "inversion," and the math is pretty straightforward.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. is paying a lower relative cost to borrow than before the financial crisis even after ceding more than a year’s profit to settle disputes linked to faulty mortgages and Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon said banks will have to charge more for lending to get a “fair return” as regulators require the industry to set aside more funds to cushion against losses.

Wall Street faces intrusive new government oversight of trading after U.S. regulators issued what they billed as a stricter Volcker rule today, imposing restrictions designed to prevent blowups while leaving many of the details to be worked out later.